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Tuesday, May 2, 2017

President Obama's Kill List

Originally Published May 30, 2012; Last Updated May 02, 2017; Last Republished May 02, 2017:

Constitutional authority of our presidents does not encompass the arbitrary or ad hoc development, possession or maintenance of a human being "kill list"1.

If recent news reports accurately describe President Obama's development, possession and maintenance of a "kill list" for suspected terrorists he has exceeded his authority and thus elected to pursue a personal or extra-constitutional presidency.

To the extent such a list is operational (i.e. persons killed) our president must be held accountable.

"39. No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised [sic] or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."

The justification articulated by the Dallas police to extra-judicially kill using a robot that delivered a pound of C-4 explosive is weak, to say the least and indicative of a person who thinks he's on a battlefield.

Instead of debating the usage of mechanical drones and bots to extra-judicially kill in our metropolitan areas, lets debate why we have enabled our civilian community police departments to create battlefields in our metropolitan areas?

A proudly practiced opaque or transparent capacity for unmeasured restraint or constraint is not desirable attributes for any nation credibly and continuously auditioning for the position of global leader.

If the leaked unclassified summary whitepaper accurately represents the classified original from our Office of Legal Counsel Torture and Killing it makes John Yoo's torture until the torturee's organs fail standard seem positively progressive!

Kudos to the administration for its efforts to draft a comprehensive drone deployment policy--albeit consistent with our unfortunate tendency to shoot first and figure out a policy later! (But, hey we've only been utilizing drones for decades.)

The draft policy, in its entirety must be widely circulated for public comments, including from relevant international legislative and judicial bodies.

It's difficult to understand any derived benefits from providing our CIA with stand-off weaponry before explicitly, transparently, and publicly defining the rules under which that stand-off weaponry will operate—there is plenty of mischief and burden to be derived from providing our CIA with stand-off weaponry.

A drone strike may or may not relate to the President's extra-constitutional "kill list". Reports are unclear which drone strikes are targeted killings related to the President's extra-constitutional "kill list" and those related to Afghanistan battlefield operations.

Evidently there are drone and other killings unrelated to the President's extra-constitutional "kill list", which are based on assertions of vicarious authority of another thug, nation, sovereign entity, or proximity. Much more information is required to understand the constitutional status of the above categories of killings.

However, based on published reports, at the very least, it appears our President et al. are globally applying ad hoc and novel logic to summarily execute those they designate or have otherwise determined present a real or perceived threat to our nation or are unfortunate enough to be in close proximity to same.

1. Of course there is nothing new, novel, or particularly shocking about a living entity killing in pursuit of life—presumably the fundamental concept underpinning our president's "kill list".

However, the constitution principles of separation of powers and due process combine to relief our presidents of all authority and thus responsibility for developing, possessing or maintaining a list of human beings to kill.

Killing on the basis of profiles, patterns, templates or proximity doesn't even satisfy the fundamental concept of pursuit of life, so you never reach the constitutional principles of separation of powers and due process.